Not the Same Old “Three Rs”

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Rights, resilience and respect are at the heart of USC Canada’s food security projects.Founded in 1945 by humanitarian Lotta Hitschmanova as the Unitarian Service Committee, USC Canada began as a small group of aid workers sending supplies to war-torn Europe. Lotta was a journalist who fled Europe as a refugee, ultimately ending up in Ottawa. With backing from Canadians, she was able to support local projects that would make a difference as Europe began to rebuild. Through the 1950s, 60s and 70s, her international work moved to Asia and Africa.

Today, USC Canada is a strong and vital non-profit agency with projects in ten countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Its work is founded on the “three Rs”: rights, resilience and respect. With a focus on international social justice and development, USC Canada says food security will only exist when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious foods to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Food justice for all goes even farther, reaching to issues of control, consumption, social justice and the right to food. Clearly, we’re not there yet.

USC promotes strong, healthy, and just communities in developing countries. Its staff members work with partner organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America to strengthen community livelihoods, promote food security and support social justice and equality. In Canada, the organization builds awareness and support for international social change through public education and policy dialogue.

Because food is essential to human survival—and so plentiful in Canada—children can be stunned to discover that so many people don’t have any. Exploring food shortages in developing countries can make a dramatic impact on students. Lack of sufficient food is a concrete, easily grasped calamity that sensitive children of any age may be hungry to learn more about.

And USC has no shortage of ideas for how teachers can help students get fired up about its most important mission: food justice.
Seeds of Survival (SoS) is USC’s flagship program. Its twin goals are to promote crop diversity and to secure sources of food and livelihood for small-scale farmers while protecting the resource base essential for sustaining it. SoS fosters the development of community seed banks and emphasizes the conservation of traditional crop varieties to reduce farmers’ dependence on aid.

“The program stresses the importance of using time-tested farmer knowledge and practices,” says Susan Walsh, executive director of USC Canada. “This limits the need for external farming methods, which are often expensive and incompatible with local growing conditions.”

Taking Action with Students

USC has used a wide range of techniques in classrooms and at public events to spark discussion, focus learning and help people explore food justice issues. “It seems a daunting task to tackle food security with a group of young people, but with today’s awareness of environmental issues, nutrition and the international flavour of our schools today, we find that kids get right into it,” says Walsh.

Here are some ways to inspire a discussion of food and agriculture in a classroom setting (you can adapt these as needed, depending on the age group):

• Pick a meal or food item and discuss where its ingredients came from, along with any justice or equity issues (for example, fair-trade sugar, chocolate or coffee). Try to calculate the kilometres involved in bringing those components together. See www.100milediet.org or www.100milediet.org for information and ideas.

• Examine serious threats to our food system. The march towards genetically modified foods is of huge interest at the high school level. Teens are fascinated by what biotech has brought to the food system—but what are the long-term effects? Explore the ethical issues: Is it okay to patent a life-form? Who governs the progeny of specially developed seeds? Are professional plant breeders more entitled than farmers to the rights over a variety? Who actually benefits from the technology?

• Mine the media and internet for case studies that explain the impact of biotechnology—for example, farmer protests over genetically modified cotton in India.

• Even kindergarten children may glean something from books like The Everything Seed by Carole Martingnacco or The Smallest Seed by Eric Carle.

For kids who prefer a more hands-on approach, try some of these activities:

• Start at the seed level: map out agriculture issues in your area. Are there any seed growers or seed businesses near by?

• Play the Community Garden Game (ages 10 and up). Available through USC Canada kgreen@usc-canada.org.

• Do word puzzles on crops, seeds or bean varieties (age 8 and up). See www.puzzlemaker.com.

• Create a family album art project on vegetables—from baby lettuce seeds to little plants, then “adults.” Use pictures from magazines, seed catalogues and the Internet, or paint and draw them.

• Make art with seeds. Collect seeds in the late summer and fall, or buy a selection from a bulk or health food store. Use them to create mandalas or mosaics.

• Try the Bean Keepers story and activity at www.seeds.ca.

• Sprout sunflower seeds or others for a tasty treat. www.sprouting.com

• Play the Harvest Time board game (ages 3-7). See www.familypastimes.com.

• Contact a local branch of Canadian Organic growers (www.cog.ca) to arrange a farm visit or find a farmer interested in bringing seeds or a slide program to your class.

• Contact Seeds of Diversity Canada www.seeds.ca for a speaker and/or slide show on biodiversity and seed saving in Canada.

• Watch a movie. For older students, try Fragile Harvest (NFB), The Future of Food (Lily Films), The Fight for True Farming (NFB, French/English), Seeds of Change: Ethiopia Feeding the Future (USC Canada), River of Sand (USC Canada).

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For Young Activists

Join the Ban Terminator Campaign.
Aspiring activists may want to join the Ban Terminator Campaign with USC Canada. This winter is a key time to encourage Canadian legislators to prevent terminator genes from getting into our food and agriculture systems. For the latest information and to join the campaign, visit the USC Canada website at www.usc-canada.org.

Want to Help?

Here are some educational ways to raise money and awareness in support of food security:

• Calculate the “foodmiles” on a meal, and then have a “guess the miles” contest—one loonie per guess.
• Host a totally local meal, and play Earthdinner games to engage people in issues around food and sustainability. See www.earthdinner.org for more info.
• Fill a large jar with many different kinds of beans, and have participants guess the number and varieties.
• Switch to fair-trade chocolate, tea, coffee and sugar at school, and donate a share of the profits to an international agency or fair-trade initiative.
• Throw a sunflower-growing contest, with prizes for height, flower diameter and number of seeds produced.
• Have a sprout race—which are faster, sunflower seeds, mung beans or alfalfa?
• Volunteer with USC Canada. Check out the calendar of events on the USC website to see where we will be—we can always use a spare hand! www.usc-canada.org